Shipmate: A Royal Regard Prequel Novella (11 page)

Just as she wiped the tears away, determined
to meet her future head-on, a throat was cleared behind them.

“Sir, if you would…” Captain Rafe Johnson
trailed off, foot turned to run the other direction rather than
interrupt feminine distress. Placing himself between the captain of
the vessel and his new bride, Myron answered, “Yes, Captain?”

“Sir, I… I only meant… I mean, I
wondered…”

Bella sniffled, but stepped out from behind
her husband, taking up Captain Johnson’s hand, shaking it like a
man might. “You must be Captain Johnson. I am so sorry we haven’t
had the chance to meet until now. Lord Holsworthy has spoken most
highly of you.”

Blushing beet-red in a way Bella would never
have expected from a sailor, the captain bowed awkwardly over her
hand, as though he were entirely unaccustomed to a lady being
anywhere nearby. “My lady, I am pleased to welcome you to the
Amelia. I was hoping I might show you the arrangements we’ve made
for your quarters…” He looked at Myron. “But if this is an
inconvenient time…”

“No, no, of course, I am delighted to see
where I will be living.” Belatedly, she looked up at her husband.
“I mean, if it is acceptable to you, my lord.”

He smiled down at her. “Entirely acceptable,
my dear. Lead on, Captain.”

Only a few steps from their position, the
half-boots she had worn, among the most practical footwear she
owned, proved her first mistake. On the first step up to the
quarter-deck, her heel caught and she pitched forward. Had Myron
not been holding her elbow, she might have broken the fall with her
face.

“You may find, my lady,” the captain said
gently, after she was set aright on her feet again, “a pair of
slippers will serve you better aboard ship.”

She nodded silently, humiliation locked in
her throat, vowing to dig a pair of walking shoes out of her trunk
and drop the boots overboard at the earliest opportunity. Until
then, she merely held on, like a barnacle, to her new husband’s
arm.

In a series of brief glances, he assessed
the rest of her attire, the brand-new coffee-colored velveteen
traveling gown Aunt Minerva had insisted she wear, already soiled
with sea spray and tar. The skirt had already been rent by
proximity to whatever sharp things had existed between the carriage
block and the railing of the upper deck, and a length of torn lace
trailed from the sleeve. "You might find all the…" he flicked his
fingers at her, "ruffles and bows a nuisance…" He trailed off. "But
Your Ladyship must wear whatever suits you…"

“I assure you, I have always found ruffles
and bows a nuisance, and my attire shall be rectified as soon as I
find my trunks. Clearly, I must learn the way of things, and I will
be grateful if you gentlemen will make it your business to correct
me, should I err.” Myron smiled and squeezed the hand she had
wrapped around his elbow. “I may wish to shorten my skirts a few
inches to ensure I do not fall to my doom.” Sudden nerves overtook
her. “I mean… I would not wish to cause you any…”

“You must do as you will to avoid your doom,
my dear,” Myron assured her, kissing her hand and making her blush.
“Though I will ask you keep the sensibilities of sailors in
mind.”

She nodded and stifled a giggle at the
sudden redness of Captain Johnson’s ears.

“On the subject of sailors, might be we
should teach your wife to use a cutlass, Holsworthy.”

“Oh!” Bella exclaimed. “I could never…”
Turning to Myron, she whispered, “He wouldn’t really…? I mean, he
doesn’t expect…?”

The captain answered, as though he had been
meant to hear, “Only should you wish it, Lady Holsworthy, though I
daresay you will find a surfeit of men who would like you to be
able to protect yourself, since they will be held responsible
should you be placed in danger.”

“Oh! But… I’m sure I… I could never use a
weapon.”

Myron chided gently, “Pray, do not decide
today how you will live the rest of your life aboard ship, my lady.
There is much to understand before you can decide what you will
wish to learn.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Following the captain across the deck, she
was directed toward a series of closed doorways with glass insets,
curtained to shut out prying eyes.

“On the starboard side—”

“That is to your right, my dear,” Myron
explained.

“On the starboard side,” Captain Johnson
stressed, “is Lord Holsworthy’s cabin.”

He opened the set of doors to a fair-sized
room, far larger than she had expected, paneled in dark wood,
contained a writing desk and a bunk built into the wall, less than
half the width of her bed at Brittlestep Manor. The room also
contained a large cannon, taking up no less than a quarter of the
space.

“Must we live with guns in our quarters?”
She swallowed hard. “And such large ones.”

Myron nodded with a grim look. “This is a
sixty-gun ship. There are no cabins that do not also house cannon,
my dear, and I beg you recall it is for your own protection.”

“Yes, my lord. Of course.”

She stepped over to an interior door and
said, “What is behind here?”

“Here, my lady,” the captain continued,
opening it for her, “we have carved out an ordnance-free sitting
room for you, and office for Lord Holsworthy.”

Painted in a delicate green, with an
amber-hued Persian carpet reaching from wall to wall, this area had
been designed to accommodate their family life. An escritoire sat
to one side, a larger partner’s desk to the other, and a clutch of
armchairs and a loveseat in the center. A drop-leaf table hugged
the back wall, providing a place to take a meal, beside a door
leading to a small balcony that could only be accessed through
their quarters.

“What a lovely balcony! What a wonderful
place to have tea and think.”

Even the jaded-looking captain smiled at
that. “The stern gallery, my lady. Balconies exist only on
land.”

“Oh, of course. I suppose eventually, I will
learn the language?”

“I think it inevitable,” Myron said with a
smile.

Another interior door, this time between two
floor-to-ceiling gated shelves, according to the captain, led to
“Her Ladyship’s cabin.” At her nervous grin, he unlocked the door,
handed her the key, and pushed the door open. “Lord Holsworthy
asked that—” The poor man’s ears were burning again.

“I wished you to have a place on board that
you could call your own, my sweet, and I asked the princess’ advice
in the decoration. I hope you find it pleasing.”

“Oh, yes!”

Bella felt the smile reach from ear to ear
when she took in the room, decorated as lavishly as any in
Charlotte’s parents’ home, the same narrow bunk as Myron’s, draped
in gold muslin and not designed for two. Oil lamps lit the space,
which might be illuminated further were she to open the curtains,
but then anyone walking across the deck could see into her rooms.
The gun so evident in Myron’s chamber was hidden by a dressing
screen in hers.

The chamber was carpeted with a thick
oriental rug, the walls painted a deep shade of blue. Her books
were aligned on shelves that took up half a wall, kept safely in
place behind gold chains that ran across each shelf from side to
side. The comfortable chair covered in gold brocade turned from
side to side, but was attached firmly to the floor, and the top of
the candle stand next to it—which made it a reading nook, as far as
Bella was concerned—was ringed with delicate brass to keep anything
from falling off. An armoire and trunk stood open, her dresses
neatly hanging on sprung hooks, boots and belts and bags neatly
folded and secured, so her clothing wouldn’t fly around the cabin
if the ship were tossed about in a storm.

“How very clever it all is! I would never
have thought to make certain everything was kept in its place.”

The two bedchambers and sitting room
conjoined a very large dining room that would serve to feed
everyone in turns daily, and in between times, men might meet to
plot out their duties. Without much trouble, though, Bella could
see, it could be transformed to serve as a venue for a formal
dinner or party.

Their quarters were extremely generous in
terms of space, much larger than the prince had implied when he had
told her about the accommodations, but no inch of space went
unused, and every area served more than one function.

Stumbling against the rocking of the ship,
she observed, “I’m not accustomed to the world always shifting
under my feet. Not in a literal sense, at any rate.”

“You’ll have your sea legs in no time, my
lady,” Captain Johnson said with a smile. “Though I caution, you
may find yourself feeling quite ill within an hour or two. Most
people do.”

“Yes, Lord Holsworthy has warned me.”

Bella balked at the ladder she was asked to
descend to view the royal and ambassadorial quarters directly below
theirs, so Myron climbed halfway down first, apparently intending
to protect her from falling, but finally, she shook her head.

“No, my lord. If I will live on this ship, I
must learn my way around it under my own power.” Myron stepped back
at the end of the steps and smiled as she gathered up her skirts
and climbed down. “I am now certain I must shorten my skirts a bit,
however.”

The three rooms below had been designed to
the taste of the Prince of Wales and his sister, as had a dozen
smaller cabins, not quite as sumptuous, for lesser aristocrats and
their staff, but which would quarter various officers until their
official use was required. Bella felt both the weight and
exhilaration of being mistress of this small portion of the large
ship, much as she had the first time her aunt had taken the
Effingale family to London and left Bella
chatelaine
of
Brittlestep Manor in their absence. The weight of it began to tug
at her stomach.

In fact, her stomach was starting to feel a
bit out of sorts. She wrapped an arm around her middle.

Myron took one look at her face and said,
“You look suspiciously green, my dear. Into bed with you, Lady
Holsworthy.” He motioned her to the ladder to her cabin. Bella and
Captain Johnson both flushed bright red before Myron realized his
double entendre. “I mean—as I should think you know, Captain—that
Lady Holsworthy is about to be very ill for an undetermined
interval, and will be far more comfortable in her nightrail, in her
cabin, in her bed, with ginger tea and hardtack at hand. There is
nothing salacious in that, surely.”

The idea that her new husband was about to
watch her casting up her accounts made her that much queasier, and
she scrambled up the ladder. By the time she reached her quarters,
she was swaying on her feet a bit more than the ship’s movement
warranted. Myron, right behind her, put a bucket underneath her
retching mouth just in time to save the lovely carpet.

“Oh, no, my Lord,” she moaned, once she had
cleared enough of her stomach contents to find her voice again. “I
will give you a disgust of me. You cannot be—”

His hand stroked the back of the head.
“Where else should I be on my wedding night, but with my bride, for
better or worse? I have been a sailor since the age of fourteen and
seen many a case of
mal de mer
. You will survive it, though
I daresay you will doubt me before it is done.”

At that, her stomach lurched again, and he
steadied the bucket and her shoulder. As the episode shuddered to a
close, his gentle fingertips brushed the hair out of her face that
had fallen from its pins, pulled it back, and tucked it into the
back of her dress. As she caught her breath, he produced a box of
ginger pastilles from his waistcoat pocket.

“Ginger tea in a matter of minutes, if I
know Captain Johnson, and our ship’s doctor, Charles Anders, will
likely make an appearance, though there will be nothing particular
he can do. For the moment…” He held out the tin and she took one.
“Unfortunately, my dear, we cannot know how severe your ailment
will be, nor how long-lasting, but I am of good faith that our Lord
will see you well in short order. And I will be here to act as
your…” His eyes twinkled, and he touched her chalky cheek, “I
suppose ‘lady’s maid’ is the role I am asked to fill, is it
not?”

She stared at him bleakly, sucking on the
candy, as her stomach rolled with the motion of every disparate
wave within ten leagues.

May 30,
1805

“The ship’s cook will be delighted you are
feeling more yourself. He hates to see food go to waste. And he is
a very good cook, so I am pleased you can enjoy his talents.”

Bella had made short work of a bowl of fish
soup and a thick slice of soda bread, the first food she hadn’t
declined in three days, and was now seated, wrapped in a woolen
dressing gown, at the writing desk in his sleeping quarters, as he
prepared for an afternoon meeting with the captain. He tied his
long hair back in a queue, and inspected his face in a looking
glass on the wall above his dressing table.